To All Appearances a Lady - Marilyn Bowering

If you are interested in boats, the western coast of British Columbia, and Chinese immigration to Western Canada, this novel is for you. So, this novel was for me!
You do have to suspend your belief a little as a ghost steers a boat through Haro Strait, but the revealing, twisty ending is totally worth it!
There was one scene in this novel that I felt didn't fit the tone, mood, or storyline. I won't say what it is so that I don't influence your reading of "To All Appearences," but I would be interested in chatting about it if someone else has read this. It just kinda came outta nowhere and was a little shocking. A lot shocking.
In this story, Robert Lam (an aging sailor) goes on one last solitary sail up the coast of Vancouver Island, only to be joined by the ghost of his recently deceased opium-addicted aunt (who raised him). She stays to reveal to him the story of his mother (who Robert cannot remember) and father (whose name Robert doesn't even know).
I love how this book goes back and forth from the present to the past, and if you like good stories, then you'll love the story of how Robert's mother and aunt travel across the Atlantic to their new life in the opium factory, to D'Arcy Island (everyone's favourite leper colony), to Victoria, and back to the sea...